Forbidden Darkness (The Forbidden Darkness Chronicles, #1)

Sixteen

I woke up a few hours later and Philip was still sitting in my room, with headphones in his ears and texting someone furiously on his phone. I closed my eyes and pretended to be asleep, mostly because I was so exhausted I didn't really feel like getting up.

For the little amount of light outside, I assumed that it was about six o'clock, which was good. That meant in just a few hours I could go back to sleep.

And that also meant my mom—also known as my kidnapper—was home.

As if I had some sort of telepathy with her, next thing I knew she was walking into my room so I kept my eyes closed. No need to hear from her right now.

"How's she feeling?" my mom asked Philip.

"She's alright," he said. "I don't think Kadin messed with her this time. Did Lena catch you up?"

"Yes, she did. So...this Kadin person...do we know what he is?"

"Unfortunately not," Philip replied. "There are many things he could be, but it's just weird because we've never seen anything like him before. Kadin being a different species could cause so many issues."

"Like what?" my mom asked.

There was a long pause on Philip's part before he said, "Whatever his species is, they want Heather. Or at least he does. Because of this, the Council might declare war on them."

Wait, hold up! Were they serious? Of course, if I broke my silence, they probably wouldn't keep talking, so I kept my mouth shut tight.

"Can we allow that?" Mom asked. "I mean, there's no way the Council would want to declare a war on them just because of Heather, right?"

"In a sense, no. But if they cause her any harm, it could cause a war that no one has ever seen before. We don't even know what this species is, how long they've been around, or what they're even capable of. Until we know, things are going to get dangerous."

Damn it, I really was the key problem here. If I was such a problem, why didn't they just kill me? Oh...wait, Kadin already tried that. But the Council obviously wanted me alive, but why would they start a war over just one little Monster Hunter like me? It didn't make sense. Just because one person here is killed in the United States doesn't mean our country immediately goes to war. But they did say there were less Monster Hunters than humans. There were only the few of us in this area, so that had to say something.

"Does Heather know?" That was my mom, like usual, looking out for me. Her words tugged at my heart and I couldn't help it—she was mom, whether she kidnapped me or not. She had always loved me, always cared for me, and nothing was going to change that.

She was my mommy.

"A little, but not about the possibility of war. That's too much for her to take in right now, don't you think?"

"But she's one of you," she replied. "I'm only human and I'm handling it."

"Yes, but you've always known about Heather. We all have. I did before I even met her. She's the last to know what she really is—a Monster Hunter—and it's hard for her to take it all in. Plus, we still don't have all the details of her birth yet. We don't know who her mother or her father is, and that makes this just a bit harder. We have no idea why her parents were sending her away, but it's good that we got her in time, otherwise she wouldn't know about herself at all right now."

So my birth parents were sending me away? To where? The things you can learn by fake sleeping, I swear, it was almost too easy. But clearly no one was going into that, which would have been nice.

"Do we know what her father was?" my mom asked. "Obviously one of her parents was the Hunter, which is her mom, right?"

"Yes. While the Monster Hunter scientists don't know all the reasons yet, a human male and a female Monster Hunter can procreate and make a Monster Hunter, but not vice-versa. Her mom would have to have the Monster Hunter genes, unless they were both Monster Hunters. That's always a possibility too, but like I said, I don't know much. This is all stuff that my dad has told me, so unless he tells me differently, this is what we're to believe."

"Well, just let me know when she wakes up. I'll be downstairs with Lena and Kristen." I heard my mom walk out of the room and I laid there for a few minutes, not "waking up" too fast because Philip would know I was listening in.

"Heather, you can open your eyes now."

My heart stopped but I did as he said. He sat in the chair smiling at me, all cute and stuff. It was annoying.

"How—?"

"I knew you were awake," he said nonchalantly. When I gave him a questioning look, he said, "Your breathing changes when you wake up. It got faster."

"But all of that stuff—" I started.

"You deserved to hear it," he said, still smiling. "If anyone asks, though, I didn't know you were listening in. Come on, it's time to eat."